Practicing the design modules of Three Modes of Care

The third workshop was held at Amity University, NOIDA under the guidance of Prof Rinpoche and Prof Samten as the key resource persons.

The main objective of this workshop was to practice the three modes of care which were discussed in the previous workshop. The day began with warm-up poses to enhance the experience of the exercises which were planned for the day. An activity related to reflecting on the personal experiences of being in school was done where the group discussed the following four questions.

Was there an educator in your life who made you feel cared about or seen concerned for who you are? Someone who respected you and believed in your potential?

What factors do you concern that you think made feel for him or her about that way?

Whenever you think about those moments, what images, feelings, thoughts or body sensations come up for you?

What impact did these experience cast on your schooling and learning processes?

Mr DK Sharma & Ms Kavita Jindal discussed on the kinds of obstacles faced by the care giver and the receiver in the successive session. Here major barriers that evolved were related to culture, language, developing negative fears etc. Prof Rinpoche viewed that in order to receive care and compassion the object should follow three basic things ‘sahajata, samta andvivek’ i.e. simplicity, equanimity and discretion.

The next session was dedicated to deepening the capacity to receive care by Ms Premlata Mullick, Ms Ashu Arora and Ms Leena Bhatia. Participants followed the steps of non-violent communication and compassionate communication by doing an activity of recalling the upset or angry moments and applying the four steps of Non-verbal communication in those situations. This also involved physical posture by poses and letting be session comprising of mountain pose stand, downward facing dog, warrior were done.

The second day’s topic of discussion was “Learning to develop self care” which was guided by Ms Deepti Gulati and Mr Arindam Ghosh. It was made clear that people need to be able to differentiate between Self Care, Pampering and Indulgence. All these three are different things which are not interchangeable. It was followed by a session on overcoming obstacles to self care by Ms Anshu Sahi, Mr Girish Sahi & Ms Nita Modi.

Concluding this workshop, Professor Samten said that in order to eliminate anger people have to first make a conscious effort to reduce it because when they cannot control the circumstances that trigger the anger, they flow with those emotions. ‘Restrain’, as an important ethic was discussed in the concluding session.

The date and venue for the next TOT was decided and Prof Rinpoche advised all the TOT members to read ‘Ethics of the New Millennium’ and ‘Beyond Religion’ by HH Dalai Lama for the next workshop.